Mack the Knife
by Greekhoop
Summary: Playing with knives. Solidus/Vamp.


**Mack the Knife**

**Notes:** This was written for a weapon themed challenge on mgs slash on LJ.

* * *

Solidus had known the boy for so long now that very little he did surprised him.

He had been cautioned about him in the past: his unpredictability, his feral blood. As if the boy were a wild beast. Solidus knew there was so much more to him than that. Such were the secrets the boy shared only with him, things that only the two of them could understand.

The boy had put so many patches over so many tears that they had eventually knit together into a unified whole. His inherent contradictions had become so numerous that they no longer clashed with one another. Each flowed into the next, like the movements of a lifelong martial artist as he traveled through a familiar _kata_.

Solidus had thought of every boy he ever raised as an extension of himself. More features of the same face than fingers on the same hand, for inevitably some struck him more than others. Some were more symmetrical, more beautiful. But beautiful or not, Solidus had never felt much when he laid one in the ground. There were always other boys who needed a father, and he had never been queasy about cutting off the hand that offended him.

Those boys had all died too young, but given a long enough timeline, couldn't the same be said of them all?

The ones that Solidus had considered worthy enough to see through to manhood were not more numerous than the bullets in a single gun. Jack had been the last, but he had not been the only one.

* * *

Solidus drove up the coastal highway toward the Canadian border. His eyes were on the dark ribbon of blacktop before him, and on the passenger seat was a thick dossier. He didn't need the folder. Already, he knew its contents by heart. But he had brought it along for the same reason a bored commuter might bring a paperback spy novel on the train.

There wasn't much of interest to him, but he remembered well the way Ocelot had perched on the edge of his desk back in DC, his legs neatly crossed at the ankle, pouring over the contents of the folder. Solidus had been surprised. Usually Ocelot had no interest in dry academia.

"It's a personal project of mine," Solidus had explained, though Ocelot hadn't asked. "Some people have a Model T up on blocks in the back yard. Some people have a basement full of toy trains. I have this."

"Ah, so he's your Great American Novel?"

"Not exactly," Solidus replied. "I don't have an eye for the arts. I decided to make something more practical."

But Ocelot had turned the page by then, and he was looking at one of the photographs of the boy. "I see you couldn't bring yourself to abandon style for substance completely, though."

Solidus shrugged. "Beauty is cheap. It's talent that really means something in this world."

"And is he?" Ocelot said. "Talented, I mean."

"He's talented. Perhaps a little ahead of his time. He wasn't appreciated where he was. It was the Soviets who found him, you know. But they couldn't give him all the attention a growing boy needs. No offense, Shalashaska."

"No. None taken."

"You see, the problem with old men like us is that we've grown sentimental. We still have all our teeth, but we've worn them dull worrying ideals. No mortar ever wondered about the nature of war. No landmine ever stopped to think about morality. Even a career soldier can come to question his purpose, but those guns on your hips will never question you, will they?"

"Do you think you're the first person to think of that, Solidus?"

"Not at all," Solidus said. "And I never claimed to be doing anything more than dabbling in an established field."

"But I can see it in your eyes. You know it's never worked before. You know it's impossible, but still you hope…"

"Do you know how it is with a very fine blade?" Solidus said. "It's as if it's just another part of you. An extension of your arm. If two people could be so close, then no one would ever have to be lonely."

"How very thoughtful of you," Ocelot replied dryly. "And I suppose you have an ingenious plan to break him of his youthful rebellious streak?"

"You know, he's nearly eighteen," Solidus said. "He's had more of a childhood than most people. Better, too."

"Yes. But we all have to grow up sometime."

"I know him well." Solidus' eyes thinned conspiratorially. "He has a weakness for blonds."

"All-American girls? Yes, I suppose he would. He wouldn't want anything that reminds him of home. So there's a girl involved, is there?"

"No. There's no girl."

"A boy, then?"

"I'll tell you all about it," Solidus said. "When I get back from Quebec."

Ocelot smiled.

He did not smile as rarely as people thought when they first met him, but the angle his lips made when he did was easy to mistake for something else.

"What about his name?" he said.

"Oh," Solidus said. "That. He picked it himself."

"It's clever."

"And yet he isn't a particularly clever boy. I don't let him have books. He must have gotten it from something he saw on television."

"There's no need to make excuses," Ocelot said. "I like it, actually. It's rather memorable. It fits quite comfortably in the mouth."

And he said it aloud, letting the first consonant idle in the space between teeth and lower lip. Cropping the last sound short. He must have liked it a lot, because when Solidus did not reply immediately, he said it again, to keep something in the silence.

"Vamp."

* * *

Solidus pulled off the highway and killed the engine. He was far from the nearest town, and it was late. The silence was very deep.

A hunter's moon seethed overhead, reflected in the tesseracts of frost on the grass and in the bare tree branches. The woods were linen-colored in the light from that moon. Heavy with shadow. Lovely as death.

The Saint Marguerite passed near here on its way to the sea, but it would be frozen solid this time of year. Solidus felt certain that the boy was, even now, following the river. That he would be here presently, before the night was over.

He had been so confident in this that prediction that he had not checked Vamp's location before coming here. He was confident still, but he opened the small panel embedded in the dashboard. A blue point pulsed in the center of a coordinate grid. Solidus watched it for a while, until he had an idea of the boy's progress.

Vamp was making his way slowly along the river. He hung close to the water, sometimes walking directly on the ice when the bank was impassible. He moved more slowly than Solidus had expected, but he might still be feeling the effects of the tranquilizers they had given him.

Or it might have been the cold. Vamp had always gotten cold easily. He was quicker to feel a draft than a broken bone or the loss of a comrade.

He must have been suffering, Solidus thought. Suffering a great deal. And though it was warm inside the car with the heater hissing steadily and all the windows sealed against the elements, Solidus felt a chill.

Even with a dozen miles and most of the night between them, Solidus could feel the boy's nearness. He could hear him, pulsing like a heart, in the darkness just beyond the tree line. Coming to him, like a missile that, once locked on, will not rest until it is sheathed in living heat. Until that union so pure it leaves no witnesses to it.

Solidus watched the small spot of blue, and the more he watched the more its steady blinking began to seem like a kind of code. A semiotic language that no one but the two of them were meant to understand.

Get some sleep, it told him. Get some sleep. I'll be closer to you tomorrow.

* * *

Solidus had picked the bait himself from his pool of operatives. That icy blond with the faint accent of no particular place. He was slight, but he was soft. Everywhere but in his eyes. He went by the name Edward, but that wasn't his real name. None of them had real names anymore.

Vamp hadn't been Vamp back then. Not yet. In those days, his name had still been Adrian, and to Solidus that was what he would continue to be, until the day that one of them died.

He should have been grateful. It was not often that Solidus was so indulgent.

Adrian had taken to the blond from the moment he saw him. Solidus had known that he would. He was still a boy, after all, and love at first sight did not yet seem crude to him.

Solidus had only wanted Edward to get in close, which he did with admirable skill. Though perhaps he enjoyed this particular mission a bit more than he should have. Solidus had always wanted his boys to grow up knowing the value of hard work.

He conducted the debriefings personally. Alone in a dark hotel room, Edward's frigid confidence effervesced away. Gone, like a fist when you open your hand. In Solidus' presence, he was very small, and he tried very hard to not attract attention.

Solidus wrung every detail from him, and they made strange things stir in him. And when their business was finished and Solidus gripped the boy tenderly by the throat and pushed him onto his back, it was done with love in his heart. The monstrous, terrible love he always felt when he thought of that slim white body that Edward's hands had touched not so very long ago.

That mouth, so recently kissed that Solidus was certain a taste of it must have lingered still, like the smell of cordite after a gun was fired.

* * *

Solidus slept a little, and he woke to the sound of branches being displaced.

It was a very faint disturbance. Adrian stepped from the tree line as quiet as a timid deer. His black Henley was torn, his jeans dirty at the knees. The cuffs of his shirt were dark with blood. Old blood, long since dried. It had turned black beneath his fingernails. His hair was wild around his face, longer than the last time Solidus had seen him.

Both of them had always liked it long.

Solidus got out of the car. Thought he wore a heavy coat and leather gloves, the cold still stung. It speared through his clothes like a knife found the hollow between two ribs. Adrian watched him, and his face betrayed none of what he felt.

Perhaps, Solidus thought, he felt nothing at all. Perhaps his journey through frozen woods had wrung it all out of him.

"To be honest, Adrian, I had expected you earlier."

Vamp came forward. He made no sound when he moved, and even the prints his boots left in the fresh snow were as ephemeral as shadows.

"I thought I'd find you here," he said. "My pot of gold at the end of the rainbow."

"And tell me," Solidus said, "Did Edward play his part?"

Vamp didn't seem surprised. "He tried to kill me," he said. "I knew that he would. I could see it in his eyes. Something had turned off behind them. Shutters drawn against the storm. I know the eyes of a murderer when I see them."

"Did you love him?" Solidus asked.

Vamp didn't hesitate. "Yes."

"Where is he now?" Solidus said.

"Dead."

"And the men who drugged you and brought you out here?"

"All dead."

"And you?"

"Dead."

Solidus was pleased.

"What about you?" Vamp said.

He smiled thinly. "Alive and well."

"Why did you do this to me?" Vamp said. "Was it all just a test?"

"To you?" Solidus said. "No, I did it for you. You needed a purpose, and I delivered one."

"And you? What do you need?"

"You've always known the answer to that. You know me better than anyone, Adrian. We're the same, you and I. You're like an extension of my arm."

"Solidus…"

He laughed. "What happened to 'father'?"

Vamp showed a row of teeth, sharp and white in the light of the moon. The moon as pale as murder. It must have understood him well, Solidus thought, a moon like that.

"I have no father," Vamp said. "When I was a boy, I gave names to the things around me. I gave personalities to the bedposts and the grape arbors around my home. And I know now that the man I thought of as my father was only the one who went through the ceremony of naming, who looked at me with a critical eye and tried to decide if I looked like I'd be kind, or coy, or cruel."

"You're all of those, Adrian," Solidus said. He opened the car door. "Get in. We'll go home. You've had a long night, haven't you?"

The longest leg of the journey was behind him now. Like the protracted trip a bullet made from the factory to the field, all that was left now was the last dash from the muzzle of a gun.

Vamp didn't come at first. Solidus was patient. He didn't mind the boy weighing his options, as long as he always came up with none. Gusts of frozen breath billowed around him, hiding his face like a young girl's hand flew to her cheek conceal a blush.

He stepped forward, then stepped again. And Solidus realized the boy was coming towards him. He was aware of the shoulder holster inside his coat, the heavy revolver in it. Big enough to blow a hole in god himself.

But Solidus made no move to draw.

Vamp stopped before him, close enough that Solidus could feel the boy's breath on his face. He was taller than the last time Solidus had seen him. There was a depth to him that he had not noticed there before.

And Vamp said nothing, only held Solidus' gaze. His eyes were icy blue, but there was fire in them. Liquid, molten heat. Greek fire; the kind that rages and consumes.

In spite of himself, Solidus was unsettled.

He reached up, and curled a hand around Vamp's throat. There was an erratic pulse beneath his fingers, hammering so hard that Solidus could feel it even through his gloves. It leapt like silver fish straining upriver. And Solidus tightened his grip, until he could feel it no longer.

Vamp moved easily, as if Solidus held all his strings. He pushed the boy back against the car, and when Vamp squirmed a little against the frozen metal and cloudy glass, Solidus felt vindicated. He tugged his glove off with his teeth, and offered his wrist to Vamp's lips. The boy tilted his face up to meet it, pressing his mouth against the junction where the rough skin of Solidus' palm began to turn smooth.

His tongue flicked out, tracing the path of a vein beneath the skin. But he didn't use his teeth.

Slowly, Solidus came to understand. "You're not hungry? You've already eaten tonight? Can a dying man really give you more than I can?"

Vamp didn't answer. Solidus took him by the jaw and turned his face away roughly. When he pressed closed, he was surprised by how alive the boy felt. How he seemed to hum with fragile, tremulous life, like a fallen sparrow, in the palm of his hand.

Solidus did not try to kiss him. He didn't want to scare the boy.

His hands pushed under Vamp's shirt, one gloved the other bare. He slid his fingertips up the boy's chest, taking a moment to trace the trajectory of the muscle there. The intricate cords and pulleys that lay just below the skin; the places where ribs shone through, clear as day.

Vamp's chest heaved with a sigh. It was a shift that set the world wobbling on its axis.

"Even now?" he said as Solidus unzipped his jeans, peeling them away like the skin of a medical cadaver. "Even still…?"

"Always," Solidus said. He slipped Vamp's jeans down over his hips. Beneath the denim, there was nothing but a skin.

Though he was cold, chilled all the way to the bone, Vamp's cock stirred restlessly to life when Solidus closed a gloved hand around it. How marvelous it must be, Solidus thought, to be so young. Vamp's hips shifted forward, at first subtly, then more urgent as he sought shelter from the sting of frozen air.

He lifted his body away from the car, enough that Solidus could slip an arm around his waist, tugging him so his hips were angled out. Vamp bit his lip, worrying it between his teeth. Thoughtful and slow, as if it were a tricky clue in a crossword puzzle.

He made no sound as Solidus unzipped his pants, pressing forward so his cock slid between Vamp's thighs, up into the hollow place where his hips came together.

The boy sighed, and that was all. He wrenched away, and turned, and pushed up against the car again. He folded his arms over his chest to keep them between his body and the cold metal, but the way he cupped each shoulder so delicately in the opposite hand was like a maiden protecting her modesty.

His skin was cold, but once Solidus was inside him he couldn't feel it. Vamp arched beneath him, rolling his shoulders. Seeking Solidus' hand in his hair like a cat.

He made no sound as Solidus thrust into him, though he was not exactly gentle. The boy was a boy no longer; he could certainly handle a little rough trade. Vamp just planted his feet wide apart. They slid a little on the ice, carving slow scars into the accumulated powder.

Solidus tasted snowflakes on his lips. It had collected in the weave of Vamp's shirt, and when his mouth brushed past the boy's shoulder, the cold was like a wet and stinging kiss. Vamp did not resist him, but he did not yield easily, at the first touch from Solidus' hand, like he had when he was younger.

He was accommodating, impersonal. Aloof and obliging. A cutthroat young businessman orchestrating a corporate merger.

But Solidus was not disappointed. Indeed, he was far from it.

He finished quickly. He knew that Vamp's upbringing had been a religious one, and so he appreciated highly symbolic gestures. But it was too cold, too much of the night gone, for a full ceremony.

Vamp shuddered, swaying a little with Solidus' release. When he was free once again, he zipped up his jeans and knelt. He dipped his hands in the snow and washed them, as if of blood.

* * *

Curled up in the passenger seat, with his temple against the window and his breath steaming the glass, Vamp slept. Even when the sun rose and shone on his face, he did not stir. His lips were parted slightly, his face unlined. His breathing was even.

He slept like a man with a clean conscious, Solidus thought. Or simply like an exhausted boy.

He knew that Vamp was not dreaming of him. His mind was miles away still, beside the shallow grave of the blond boy he had killed. But Solidus felt no regret. All was as he had planned.

They had drifted apart in appearance only; he knew that they were closer now than they had ever been before. And Solidus knew, also, that he would have to treat the boy differently from now on. It would not be right to show him any less tenderness than Ocelot showed his revolvers.

From now on, he would keep him as dear as a cartridge in the chamber.

~End


End file.
